More changes at top of SUSD

Assistant superintendent to retire; duties reassigned

STOCKTON - Stockton Unified School District trustees have been preparing to replace retiring Superintendent Steve Lowder, and on Tuesday night, the board also approved a move that will help transition its administrative team for retiring Assistant Superintendent of Student Services Julie Penn.

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By Keith Reid

recordnet.com

By Keith Reid

Posted Jul. 10, 2014 at 12:01 AM

By Keith Reid

Posted Jul. 10, 2014 at 12:01 AM

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STOCKTON - Stockton Unified School District trustees have been preparing to replace retiring Superintendent Steve Lowder, and on Tuesday night, the board also approved a move that will help transition its administrative team for retiring Assistant Superintendent of Student Services Julie Penn.

Penn, 57, will leave the district in December after 23 years, with an official retirement date of June after using accrued vacation time.

As she prepares to leave, however, Penn devised a plan that would split her duties - overseeing the departments of child welfare and attendance, health services, preschool, counseling, and emergency services - between Assistant Superintendent of Special Education Tom Anderson and Assistant Superintendent of Educational Services Mark Hagemann.

"Because we've known I'm retiring, we want to make sure people will really be prepared," Penn said, adding that the district wants to be "laser focused" on providing support to principals and teachers.

Hagemann will add after-school, preschool and counseling services under his areas of supervision.

Under the plan, Anderson gets the new title of assistant superintendent of educational support services.

"It's not really a promotion for Tom, but he's overseeing more," Penn said. "We've been incorporating special education into a learning center model, so it has become more a part of education services."

Anderson will also be allowed to create two new directors on the staff, Penn said. One of the jobs will be a promotion for Child Welfare and Attendance Administrator Dee Alimbini to director of student support services. The second job will be to hire a director of special education to oversee much of the day-to-day work of running the department under Anderson's supervision.

Anderson said he thinks the change will be good, "because there will be less of a barrier between what we're trying to do" regarding special education and mainstream classrooms.

The cost of the administrative changes are "cost-neutral," Penn said, because any raises and new hires will ultimately be covered by her salary of $138,500, which is coming off the books.

Contact reporter Keith Reid at (209) 546-8257 or kreid@recordnet.com. Follow him at recordnet.com/edublog and on Twitter @KReidme.